Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Tres Leches Cake

What a surprise! I don't know who had the idea to make a cake and then pour a mixture of milks over it, but, whoever you are, WELL DONE. I've never tasted Tres Leches Cake, so I really had no idea what to expect. Part of me thought it would turn out soggy. Part of me thought it would be kind of tasteless, you know, like MILK. All of me was wrong.

I used this recipe from The Pioneer Woman Cooks! and it was really, really easy. So easy that I was absolutely astonished at how perfectly sponge-y and golden brown-y the cake was at the end of baking. It rose so perfectly and came out of the pan so smoothly. Look at all those little holes! Beautiful.

I didn't exactly follow the directions about how much of the milk mixture to pour over the top of the cake. Mainly because I didn't want to cut the sides of the cake off, I wanted to try to get them as soaked as the middle of the cake. So, in my attempt, I used almost all of the milk.

The cake wasn't able to soak all of it up and I ended up using paper towels to mop up the extra. Which is okay. It was worth it to get milk all the way to the edges of the cake. I also didn't use the "traditional" maraschino cherries...because...they go in Manhattans, and that's about all maraschino cherries should be used for. And I only used real cherries on half of the cake because mr. isn't really a fan of them. So.

Delicious. Moist. Sweet and yes, milky, but in a good way. Almost caramel-y. A little rum in the milk mixture wouldn't go wrong, would it? It would be a Dulce de Leche Tres Leches Cake, right?

TGIP Rating--Tres Leches Cake--KEEPER. I had absolutely no idea it would turn out to be that delicious.

Next up: I'm going to make Blackberry Pie with the BAKED Sunday Mornings folks (and probably try my hand at Fresh Blueberry Pie as well). I've never made a baked berry pie, so this will be interesting. And, most likely, yummy.